More of what we knew years ago....

.....but could not prove in a court of law. 

So, now it can be proven. Is Rove ever going to be prosecuted for even one of his many crimes against the Constitution and the Democratic Republic we are supposed to be willing to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic? 

Let me add that defense of the Constitution does not necessarily mean violence against other Americans or co-citizens of our planet. Let us hope that it does not come to that, again. Let us have the courage to pledge non-violence, even in the face of the ugliest intimidation, angry faces and vile threats.

While the far right in America waves guns and shouts down others, in public acts of intimidation and threats of assassination, the so-called Left, in the last 40 years, has grown older and wiser. At least I devoutly hope so. 

Give a fool enough rope and he will hang himself every time.

Rove Implicated in Prosecutor Firings

By Jason Leopold
August 12, 2009

Political adviser Karl Rove and other officials inside George W. Bush’s White House pushed for the firing of a key federal prosecutor because he wasn’t cooperating with Republican plans for indicting Democrats and their allies before the 2006 election, according to internal documents and depositions.

The evidence, which House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers released Tuesday and turned over to a special prosecutor, contradicts claims by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials that the White House played only a minimal role in the firing of David Iglesias and eight other U.S. Attorneys, who were deemed by a Justice Department official as not “loyal Bushies.”

In a recent interview with the New York Times and Washington Post, Rove downplayed his role in the firings, saying he only acted as a “conduit” for complaints that Republican Party officials and GOP lawmakers sent to him about the federal prosecutors. But the documents tell a different story.

The documents reveal that Rove, his White House aides and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers actively participated in the decision to oust New Mexico U.S. Attorney Iglesias because Republicans wanted him to bring charges against Democrats regarding alleged voter fraud and other issues.

According to Miers’s closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, a “very agitated” Rove phoned her from New Mexico, apparently in September 2006, and told her that Iglesias was “a serious problem and he wanted something done about it.”

At the time of the phone call, Rove had just met with New Mexico Republican Party officials angry at Iglesias, who was refusing to proceed with voter fraud cases because he felt the evidence was weak and because pre-election indictments would violate Justice Department guidelines.

Miers said she responded to Rove’s call by getting on the phone to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and passing along the message that Rove "is getting lots of complaints." Miers added, "it was a problem." 

About one month later, Iglesias was added to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be removed.

But the documents show that White House dissatisfaction with Iglesias over his resistance to bringing politically motivated cases against Democrats had been building for more than a year. On June 28, 2005, Scott Jennings, one of Rove’s aides, sent an e-mail to Tim Griffin, another Rove aide, asking what could be done to remove Iglesias.

“I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY,” Jennings wrote, complaining that “Iglesias has done nothing” on prosecuting voter fraud cases and adding: “We’re getting killed out there.”

‘Driving Force’

In a statement on Tuesday, accompanying release of more than 5,000 pages of documents, including transcripts of the recent interviews with Rove and Miers, Conyers said the revelations warrant further inspection by special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who has spent nearly a year conducting a criminal probe into the firings.

"After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin, this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons,” Conyers said.

A Justice Department watchdog report concluded last year that a majority of the prosecutor firings were politically motivated. The U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, was pushed out, so Rove's aide, Tim Griffin, could be given the job. But -- in the face of the growing scandal -- Griffin bowed out.

For months, Rove and Miers had dodged congressional subpoenas seeking their testimony in the matter, citing George W. Bush’s broad claims of executive privilege. But the Obama administration brokered a deal that had Rove and Miers testify behind closed doors.

Besides the Bush White House pressure for ousting Iglesias, powerful New Mexico Republicans also weighed in.

In October 2006, a month before the midterm elections that cost Republicans control of the Congress, an e-mail chain started by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, faulted Iglesias for not using his office in a manner that would help Wilson in her reelection campaign.

Wilson’s e-mail included a news report about an FBI probe of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, as an example of criminal investigations proceeding close to election day.

Steve Bell, chief of staff to New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, forwarded the e-mail to Jennings at Rove’s White House shop, with a note, saying it "seems like other U.S. attorneys can do their work even in election season. And the FBI has already admitted they have turned over their evidence [in a federal corruption probe] to the [U.S. Attorney] in [New Mexico] and are merely awaiting his action."

Jennings then passed along the e-mail to Rove, saying Iglesias was “shy about doing his job on [Patricia] Madrid,” a Democratic congressional candidate who would lose the 2006 election to Wilson by only 800 votes.

Last year, Wilson told Justice Department watchdogs investigating the U.S. Attorney purge that the context of her e-mail was more of a "heads up" to the recipients. She said that if she were asked by reporters about an FBI investigation into Madrid, she would confirm it. Madrid was New Mexico's former attorney general who was involved with a political action committee that was allegedly under scrutiny.

Domenici’s Intervention

Domenici also intervened, personally lobbying Bush’s top aides to fire Iglesias, according to the documents. Between September 2005 and April 2006, Domenici called Attorney General Alberto Gonzales three times to complain about Iglesias’s handling of voter fraud and corruption probes and to ask that he be fired.

Gonzales testified to Congress that he did not recall Domenici ever making such a request. Gonzales resigned in August 2007 amid the political fallout from the prosecutor-firing scandal.

On Oct. 4, 2006, Domenici also called Deputy Attorney General McNulty “expressing concern about Iglesias’s lack of fitness for the job of U.S. Attorney.”  

At one point, according to Rove’s testimony, Domenici wanted to speak with President Bush to press his case, but Rove talked him out of it. However, in October 2006, the senator personally asked Bush’s chief of staff Josh Bolten to replace Iglesias, according to White House phone logs and e-mails.

In congressional testimony, Iglesias said he also received telephone calls from Domenici and Wilson in October 2006 inquiring about the timing of an indictment against former state senator Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and other Democrats who were involved in a courthouse construction project.

Domenici’s interventions prompted a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, which resulted last year in a letter of reprimand for creating an “appearance of impropriety.” Special prosecutor Dannehy is probing possible obstruction of justice charges against Domenici and his former aide Bell.

Dannehy secured the testimony last April of Scott O’Neal, the assistant FBI special agent in charge of the Albuquerque field office, who reportedly informed Domenici or his aide Bell about the status of the FBI’s investigation of alleged Democratic wrongdoing, according to legal sources who requested anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the probe.

In an interview, former U.S. Attorney Iglesias said the briefing to Domenici and/or Bell, if it did take place, would be significant because it would have required approval from himself or his former colleagues who never received a formal request from O’Neal or his FBI superiors.

The U.S. Attorney’s manual states that “personnel of the Department of Justice shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress, including such things as the issuance or serving of a subpoena, prior to the public filing of the document.”

Rove’s Fingerprints

 

Regarding Tuesday’s revelations, Iglesias said he had long suspected that Rove’s “fingerprints were all over this.”

 

In an interview with me two years ago, Iglesias said he believed “somewhere on an RNC computer – on some server somewhere – there’s an e-mail from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed.” He added that he believed a “smoking gun” would eventually surface and lead directly to Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

“The e-mail timing [in October 2006] corroborates what I suspected,” Iglesias said Tuesday. Domenici and other New Mexico Republican Party officials “wanted me to file indictments and [Wilson] would benefit. They wanted to use me and my office as a political tool.”

 

Iglesias said Dannehy has access to “a lot of the facts” and “there still may be obstruction of justice charges” filed.  He added, “I can’t believe Gonzales did not know what was going on,” suggesting that the former attorney general may be one of Dannehy’s targets.

Domenici retired from the Senate and Wilson also left Congress in 2009 after unsuccessfully seeking the Republican nomination to fill Domenici’s seat, which is now held by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall.

Deputy Attorney General McNulty testified before Congress in February 2007 that the prosecutor firings were “performance related,” though that testimony also now appears to be in question.

Documents released by the Justice Department showed that Gonzales and McNulty participated in an hour-long meeting with Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who compiled the list of prosecutors to be fired, a group he famously designated as not “loyal Bushies.”

The documents, along with Rove's and Miers’s testimony, contradict numerous public statements made by White House spokespersons Tony Snow and Dana Perino in the aftermath of the December 2006 firings. Snow and Perino insisted that the White House did nothing wrong and didn't oust prosecutors for political reasons.

Yet, upon being informed in November 2006 via e-mail of the plan to fire the U.S Attorneys, Perino responded: “Someone get me the oxygen can!” When told the firings included some U.S. Attorneys who were actively investigating GOP lawmakers who were alleged to be involved in corruption, Perino added: “Give me a double shot — I can’t breathe.”

The newly released documents also show that Kansas City U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was removed in a deal between the White House and Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri that appears to have been personally approved by Rove.

According to the documents, Bond agreed to lift his hold on an Arkansas judge nominated to the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court in exchange for Graves’s firing. A White House e-mail sent to Miers stated that “Karl is fine” with the proposal.

Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

The Truth Outs in America....

But in bits and pieces most Americans don't have time to put together! That used to be the role of the news media. Now, the chore of dot-connecting has fallen to the lowly, much despised blogger. Still, many American believed that Saddam was somehow responsible for 9/11 and was up to his neck in WMD, with which he and Osama were about to nuke the east coast or spray it with anthrax or small pox, until they lost their jobs and had nothing but time on their hands with which to watch the rest of the economy collapse. A collapse, by the way, which was predictable in 2004.

Bush-Cheney Linked to CIA Leak Case

By Jason Leopold
July 3, 2009

In early fall 2003, as the scandal over leaking a covert CIA officer’s identity was exploding, President George W. Bush claimed not to know anything about the leak and called on anyone in his administration who had knowledge to come “forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.”

How disingenuous the President’s appeal was has been underscored again by a new Justice Department court filing sketching out the contents of the 2004 interview between special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Though the Obama administration continues to balk at releasing the full contents of the Cheney interview, it did reveal that Bush and Cheney were in contact about the scandal, including what is described as “a confidential conversation” and “an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President.”

The filing in a federal court case also makes clear that Cheney was at the center of White House machinations rebutting criticism from former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who charged in summer 2003 that the Bush administration had “twisted” intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. While seeking to discredit Wilson, administration officials disclosed to reporters that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

Bush and his subordinates then sought to deny a White House hand in the leak. White House press secretary Scott McClellan later apologized for his role in the deception in his 2008 book, What Happened, saying that Bush and four other high-ranking officials caused him to lie to the public in clearing Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis Libby of any responsibility for the Plame leak.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote. “And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, Vice President Cheney, the president’s chief of staff [Andrew Card], and the president himself.”

Eventually, the cover-up led to the prosecution of Libby, who was found guilty in 2007 of four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, but Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence.

When Fitzgerald’s investigation came to a close with only that one prosecution, questions were raised about his reasoning for not bringing legal action against Bush, Cheney or other senior officials implicated in the leak and cover-up. Those questions led to congressional requests for the Bush-Cheney interviews and to the current Freedom of Information court case.

In its new court filing, the Obama administration opposed release of the Cheney interview, but described the topics discussed. Besides the contacts with Bush, the filing referenced Cheney’s questions to the CIA about its decision to send Wilson to Africa in 2002 to investigate – and ultimately refute – suspicions that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger.

Cheney also was asked about his role in arranging a statement by then-CIA Director George Tenet taking responsibility for including a misleading claim about the African uranium in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, and Cheney’s discussions with Libby and other White House officials about how to respond to inquiries regarding the leak of Plame’s identity, the court filing said.

Fitzgerald also questioned Cheney about his participation in the decision to declassify parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s alleged WMD. It ultimately fell to Bush to clear selected parts of the NIE so they could be leaked as part of the White House campaign to disparage Wilson.

Obama’s Resistance

A public interest group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is seeking access to Fitzgerald’s interview with Cheney under the Freedom of Information Act and now has confronted refusals from both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

Though President Obama declared a new era of openness when he entered the White House in January, he has recently had his administration’s lawyers resist releasing information about the secret dealings of the Bush administration.

In the CIA leak case, Justice Department lawyers claimed that disclosing Cheney’s interview might discourage future government officials from cooperating with criminal inquiries.

...and they can be encouraged by charges of obstruction of a criminal investigation. It works for ordinary Americans and "government officials" work for us. If there is no accountability for government officials who break the law, there is, in reality, no law, period.

“In any such investigation, it will be important that White House officials be able to provide law enforcement officials with a full account of relevant events,” said Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the criminal division.

“Baseless, partisan allegations that, easily could be investigated and dismissed through voluntary interviews now may have to be investigated through the specter of the grand jury process. In addition, if law enforcement interviews are routinely subject to public disclosure, there could be a significant risk of politicization of law enforcement files and investigations, which could undermine the integrity and effectiveness of, and public confidence in, those investigations.”

Put Cheney before a Grand jury, now, and Bush too. They are now private citizens. Allow a jury to decide. After a number of cover-up commissions and 8 years of a partisan DOJ, we, the people, are no longer all that trusting of our government to make the right decisions about what is important and what is not.

Last month, during a court hearing on the case, Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told the judge that release of the transcript might open Cheney to ridicule from late-night comics and thus could discourage other White House officials from cooperating with government prosecutors.

He is already the subject of ridicule, deserves to be and will continue to be until he faces real justice.

"If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren't going to cooperate," Smith said during a court hearing. "I don't want a future Vice President to say, 'I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for The Daily Show.' "

Can this idiot DOJ monkey spell o-b-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n of j-u-s-t--i-c-e?

Political enemies?

I am an American independent who still believes in the constitution and international law. I am only an enemy of those who would seek to ignore or shred our founding documents and treaties we have signed or even insisted on in times past. That will include the Obama administration if they continue to obstruct justice in this nation.

When asked by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan whether the Obama administration was standing behind the refusal of Bush’s Justice Department to release the transcript, Smith answered, “This has been vetted by the leadership offices. … This is a department position.”

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said, “It is astonishing that a top Department of Justice political appointee is suggesting other high-level appointees are unlikely to cooperate with legitimate law enforcement investigations. What is wrong with this picture?”

Fitzgerald told a congressional committee last year that the interviews he conducted with Cheney and Bush in 2004 were not protected by grand jury secrecy rules, nor were there any pre-arranged agreements to keep the interview transcripts secret.

The insistence on keeping the interviews secret arose late in the Bush administration when Congress sought the transcripts. Bush’s Justice Department cited executive privilege and national security in refusing to turn them over, as well as the speculation about the effect on future White House cooperation with investigations.

The Obama administration has now taken up that banner while also adding concerns about possible comic use of the transcripts.

If there are trials, I doubt seriously that comic use would be made of the transcripts. Comedy will, however, be used if court jesters remain the only ones who will speak truth to power and the war criminals who wielded power with such abandon, thus violating American and international law.

If our constitution can still be so easily set aside in times of stress on the nation, we cannot keep lying to ourselves about being a nation under law and continue to suffer from the delusion that the people are protected by law.

If treaties we signed onto, thus creating international law such as the Geneva Conventions, can be set aside just because we are attacked, how can our allies trust us to keep our word to them about other issues?

Perhaps what I heard many years ago is true. We are no longer a nation, but a group of international corporations who are answerable to no one, at least not by electoral means.

More CIA Delays

The CIA leak case was only one of two examples this week of the Obama administration going back on its word about government transparency.

On Thursday, the Justice Department said it would not release until the end of the summer a CIA inspector general’s report that was believed to have been sharply critical of the Bush administration’s torture program.

Even then, the Justice Department said there is no guarantee that any part of the report would be declassified.

The announcement was made following several previous delays in the long-running court case between the CIA and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to gain access to the report and other documents related to the treatment of prisoners.



The Justice Department, acting on behalf of the CIA, previously told U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein that the agency would reevaluate whether the report's contents could be at least partially released by June 19. The CIA then requested two extensions – to June 26 and then July 1.



"The Report poses unique processing issues,” the Justice Department said in a letter Thursday. “It is over 200 pages long and contains a comprehensive summary and review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program.


"The Report touches upon the information contained in virtually all of the remaining 318 documents remanded for further review. Although the Government has endeavored in good faith to complete the review of the Special Review Report first, as we have gone through the process, we have determined that prioritizing the Report is simply untenable. …


“We have determined that the only practicable approach is to first complete the review of the remaining 318 documents, and then apply the withholding determinations made with respect to the information in those documents to the Special Review Report. ... One month into that process, we have concluded that we must review all of the documents together, and that the review will take until August 31, 2009.”

ACLU Objections

The ACLU, in a letter to Hellerstein, said it “strenuously” opposes the two-month delay, which would amount to “a fourth extension” of the original deadline.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said the CIA "has already had more than five months to review the inspector general's report, and the report is only about two hundred pages long."



"We're increasingly troubled that the Obama administration is suppressing documents that would provide more evidence that the CIA's interrogation program was both ineffective and illegal," Jaffer said. "President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA's secret prisons and on whose authority."


Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney who has been working on the case, said it's "apparent that the CIA report is not being delayed for legitimate reasons, but to cover up evidence of the agency's illegal and ineffective interrogation practices. …


"It is time for the President to hold true to his promise of transparency and once and for all quash the forces of secrecy within the agency. The American public has a right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its name."

We know enough now to seat a grand jury! If we cannot do that, the Obama government must not protect members of the Bu/Cheney administration from prosecution by the World Court.

Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.


"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.

Let The Sun Shine In......